Best Office Pranks

Well, as work at my now-previous firm was drying up, I went up to a co-worker (a buddy of mine) and said that I overheard the partners talking about layoffs. Needless to say, he freaked out. After a minute or so, I said, "APRIL FOOLS!!!!!!" He was pissed because it was April 2nd and therefore not actually April fools day (I agree--that was pretty messed up of me). Four days later, however, layoffs started. So, I felt kind of bad.

Hmm, I'm a pretty bad story teller. It was actually a lot funnier in-person.

Big time favorite in our office - sending emails from someone else's computer as them.

Let's just say our desktop services and business research groups have been given a lot of very disturbing tasks over the past year.

Also if you have time - and you've recently been burned bad - use your coworker's embarassing facebook photos to create a hilarious powerpoint and distribute.

I tried that Ctrl+Alt+Down Arrow on my laptop and it didn't do shit...

Didnt do shit on my computer either. Just moved my screen down one line

In the same spirit of Ctrl+Alt+Down change the settings in excel so when you press enter the box moves to the left instead of down

ctrl alt down arrow doesn't work on laptops?

Try googling it.

should flip screen upside down (possibly only windows xp/vista?)

I'm using XP....

ha.

http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/practical-jokes

nm

ctr alt down totally works on my (new) laptop which has XP... and it worked on my friend's earlier today. it was very funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddzyEYBcUNQ&feature=related

This is all very tame so far.....

"Oh - the ladies ever tell you that you look like a fucking optical illusion?"

There are some interns that really dont know much about the market. This intern got pranked pretty good.

So a trader is bored and decides he wants to send the intern for a box of upticks. He says to go down to the 4th floor and ask so and so the compliance officer for the box of upticks. The compliance officer calls the trader saying he has no ideas wtf a box of upticks is. The intern returns, the trader sends him to the other side of the floor to another desk to ask another trader. He again doesnt know where they are. The poor intern went all over the office looking for this box of upticks... Eventually he realized they were playing a joke on him. It was too funny, fortunately I was not the one searching all over the office for a box of something that doesnt exist.

"Oh - the ladies ever tell you that you look like a fucking optical illusion?"

I walked into work in the morning and my cube had other peoples' business cards taped all around it, up the sides and everywhere else. It was all because I "left early" one day at around 8-9 PM and other senior analysts found out and decided to make me suffer.

I was pretty pissed at the time but looking back on it, it seems funny now...

http://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/
Mergers & Inquisitions

Always a riot when someone steps away from their computer and you change their background picture/screen saver to something hilarious. The more NSFW the better...

The group I worked for at my previous bank was pretty intense for pranks; here is a few good ones that happened over the years:

-A VP took a stack of business cards out of the MD's jacket and wrote "I am a Gaylord" on the back of all of them. Needless to say he got quite a surprise when he went to meet with some new clients...

-The same VP changed the signature on one of the analyst's email from Joe Blow, CFA to Joe Blow, C*nt. That lasted for a few days...

-A group of guys working late one night moved an entire desk (PC, screens, phones, files) into a conference room because the associate was spending all his days talking to headhunters in that room

These are just a sample from a long list...crazy years...

Wow that's a little over the top. How did clients/outsiders react to that?

trade4life......you an ex-floor guy? We used to do that all the time.

My favorite was when guys would leave cellphones lying around and you change the language to Arabic.

Worst joke ever... the "April Fools" email a Bear SA hire sent around saying we were all having our offers revoked, only to have them actually revoked a few days later.

Personally I love the ctrl+alt+down arrow trick. People have no idea whats going on if they haven't seen it before.

NEVER lose your BlackBerry
www.conveniencesoftware.com

Yeah, I learned my lesson about joking around with people's livelihood.

These are great... giving me some ideas!

the office in this case is the CBOT

pretty funny prank

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mc-3mXrNaE

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"its the running joke now, we now have fair trade with china so they send us poisoned sea food and we send them fraudulent securities."

Faking wedding announcement + gift registry = hilarious

Screwing around on someone because they left early, therefore left more work for the rest of the team? Isn't that counter-productive :P

Jimmy Cayne.

He made people (including Joe Lewis) think they had undervalued stock.

It was only worth 10 bucks and he got to sell his shares for a higher price.

...best prank ever.

One that is played on early leavers:

Everyone has to log on to their comps with the email name. So, you pop out the keys that relate to the name from their keyboard and a few others and switch them around, plus a few extra. Be creative, write a name on the keyboard etc.

When you come to log in, you have no idea how confusing it is to see the keys in the wrong spot. Everyone ends up locking themselves out of their computer and has to wait on IT.